Hi All!

At long last, Make It Fly 2008 has drawn to a close with an amazing final which took place on the 19th October at the Trusts Stadium in Auckland. 20 teams from Auckland, Napier, Nelson, Motueka, Invercargill & Christchurch made it to the final which which was competed in high spirits & was a really amazing day!

The winners......

The Xenomorphs also known as Hamish Mckay, Rowan Lingstone & Nick Winwood from James Hargest College in Invercargill scooped the grand prize, their plane flew an amazing 101 metres and admittedly would have gone further but for hitting the wall. What a great effort and the boys chose a trip to a Gold Coast Theme Park as their prize as well as $20,000 worth of equipment for their school....they also took home the golden Make It Fly trophy!

In 2nd place was the Incredible Plane Inventors Duo from Christchurch, this 2 man team of Hayden Becker & Isaac Westenra certainly managed to put together a very ingenious design with their best flight being 77 metres. Their plane also won the nickname "The Boomerang" for is tendency to fly back towards the thrower! The boys took the 2nd place trophy as well as 6 months subscriptions to Rip It Up magazine.

3rd place went to Jewfish whose team members Adam Benesman, Hugh Manning, Jeese O'Keefe and Tim Smith from Kaikoura High School can be proud of their effort, their final throw went a very respectable 49 metres almost twice as far as their previous best! They also won subscriptions to Rip it Up magazine as well as the hand crafted bronze trophy.

The creative design prize on the day was a split decision, it went to K-Boys from Kelston Boys High in Auckland and TGS1 "I Can Fly" from Takapuna Grammar also in Auckland, both teams won an Air New Zealand simulator experience!

We will be posting all the results from the final shortly and we would also like to say a big thanks to everyone that came along, you made it a truly memorable day.

Cheers

The Make It Fly Team

Hey All!

Ok we only have 1 more event to go (New Plymouth this Thursday), this is the current leaderboard! Top 15 distances go to the final as well as some wildcards whose designs we liked.....stay tuned!

1st Team Nelson, Nelson College 34.80m + (hit the wall)

2nd Backdraft, Westlake Boys High School 34.76m

3rd K-Boys, Kelston Boys High School 34.11m

4th Chicken Egg Noodle Soup, St Marys College (AKL) 33.20m

5th Team X, Kelston Boys High School 32.03m

6th Burgundy Boys, Motueka High School 29.39m

7th Westside, Garin College 29.15m

8th Pages Pupils, Rosmini College 29.13m

9th Flying Crackers, Carmel College 28.17m

10th Jewfish, Kaikoura High School 28.10m

11th Black Night, Garin College 24.70m

12th TGS5 "I Can Fly", Takapuna Grammar School 23.79m

13th Aviation Ant Farmers, Napier Girls High School 23.20m

14th TGS2 "I Can Fly", Takapuna Grammar School 23.16m

15th We Prefer Rockets, Kelston Boys High School 22.84m

Make It Fly Blog

So with the Make It Fly competition now well under way we thought now would be the time to get our first blog up…..

No doubt you have already seen our feeble attempts at “Making It Fly” in our video, Emma & I have spent the best part of a weekend putting our aircraft together, I can tell you now it wasn’t easy & as the video shows we really struggled to take off!

With the Red Sparrow I decided that small & nimble would be the best bet. First I cut the wings (which where based on the new 787 Dreamliners wings, oh yes!) out of cardboard & glued some light weight plastic to them to give a little more durability, then I was faced with the conundrum of how to attach them to the can. I toyed with the idea of solder and rivets to give it a real airplane feel, in the end I used super glue & cello-tape mainly because I didn’t have any solder or rivets but the thought was there at least. I made the tail out of the top of a plastic bottle & made the fins using the same method I used for the wings, again super glue was used to stick it all together. I then needed a nose cone, now as the Red Sparrow was obviously going to fly for miles I decided I would need something to cushion the landing in case of a nose dive, using a polystyrene coffee cup I fashioned a rather effective nose that would take the full impact of any fall & protect the “structural integrity” of my plane! Then it was just a case of the paint job & adding those finishing touches! By paint I mean red paper I cello-taped all over it!

Hi Guys, Emma here… now that you’ve heard Andy’s rants about his ‘red sparrow’, you should be please to know that I didn’t dwell on my planes “cushioned landing” or pretty paint job. I focused on the raw durability of my craft, and using a clean-lined construction, I utilised office supplies with little or no expense to myself. Now that’s recycling! My Green Genie was a lot larger than Andy’s tweenie red bird, and its presence was surely felt during our Monday morning testing. Not only did my old fashioned wings (made of plexi-glass AKA loads of glad wrap) support my Genie and allow it to soar for miles, they also created a type of water-proof effect which helped when my girl had to make a couple of emergency ‘water’ landings.. Puddles wouldn’t drain my Genies power and she kept flying high and long all day. Even when it started to rain and her tail fell off, she wasn’t going to let some meagre red sparrow steal her thunder. I think we all know who won, fair and square. If you don’t know, It was Emma, with her Green Genie. Always the clear favourite!

Hmmmm Emma’s memory must be going because it was clear that the Red Sparrow went much further the Genie but I guess the undeniable fact is that both planes were pretty poor efforts when it came to actually Making It Fly, so you now it’s down to you! If you haven’t already visit the registration page & sign up today!

www.makeitfly.co.nz

Check out our video and pictures for ideas on how NOT to Make It Fly

Andy & Emma
The Make It Fly Team